


world shrinks

by golden_geese



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M, allusion to inhalant use, nothing explicit but the theme is prevelant, this could easily be triggering so please read at your own risk!!!!!!!, this fic subscribes to the 'mac and dennis were secretly dating in s5' theory, tw: alludes to sexual trauma, tw: dennis gaslighting himself :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 00:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16419164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_geese/pseuds/golden_geese
Summary: 7 times dennis re-lives it.prompt from an anon request on my tumblr golden-geese.





	world shrinks

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: please turn back if you are triggered by allusions to rape!

He’s fourteen. He’s shivering. He’s always cold-- he’s never been this cold. There’s a blanket on the ground next to him but he can’t bring himself to get it. Can’t bring himself to uncoil himself, to move his arms from around his folded knees, to look up. His bed is across the room-- if he only gets in, he thinks, he’ll feel a little better. He’ll be less freezing. He’ll feel safer. Nothing has ever made him feel all the way safe. Plenty of things have made him feel the opposite.

You liked it, he tells himself. You liked it. You liked it you liked it you liked it. What percentage of eighth graders have lost their virginity, he asks himself. You liked it and you’re lucky. You had sex with a woman. You lost your virginity.

He shivers harder. He thinks he might throw up.

*

He’s sixteen. Charlie’s basement smells weird. Charlie’s mom always looks at him and Mac weird. He doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the way anyone looks at him. Wishes no one would.

Charlie, is, somewhere. He doesn’t know where. He doesn’t know if it matters. Maybe he’s in the basement too. Maybe he went upstairs. 

Mac is next to him. Mac is asking if he’s okay. Dennis isn’t listening. Dennis doesn’t care. Can’t care. It’s cold. He fists his hands, reaching further down the sleeve of his flannel until they’re covered.

He hears something from upstairs. A clang of pots and pans in a cupboard. He cringes hard against it.

“I think you huffed too much glue, man,” Mac’s voice comes from next to him. “Are you cold? You look cold. Here.”

A blanket pillowing around his shoulders. It’s scratchy. It smells weird like the rest of Charlie’s house. He pulls it around himself. Feels Mac’s hand on his shoulder. Jerks away as if it hurt him physically.

*

He’s nineteen. Snores, breathing, a cough or two. If he wears ear plugs he won’t hear his alarm. But his fraternity's sleeping porch is too loud. Too fucking loud. He misses his quiet room at home where he couldn't even hear Dee across the hall most of the time. 

It’s cold. They have to keep a window cracked. It’s the rules. He doesn’t know why. He’s never really thought about it before. He’s cold. He balls himself into the thin mattress. If he hides his face maybe it will go away. Maybe it will stop. It’s not dark enough. He thinks about smoking weed with his friends in high school. About laughing with his sister, munching on whatever cookies or cookie proxy they could find in the kitchen, listening to music, drinking the alcohol they collaborated on stealing from their parents. About the cat he used to see when he wandered his neighborhood at night, trying to shake things out of his mind, hoping they would fall from his ears and be lost among the cracks in the sidewalk. Thinks about anything to avoid thinking about it.

You liked it, he tells himself. You liked it.

*

He’s twenty-four. He can hear the cars outside. He can practically feel hands on him.

He paces his room. He puts on a sweater over his flannel. He shoves a hand through his wavy hair. He rubs at his face. He can feel the hands on his back, he thinks. He lays down on his bed, staring at his ceiling, willing himself further down into the mattress. The sun through his window gets caught in his eyelashes. He squints at it.

The microwave goes. He waits for it to stop.

“Dude.”

He doesn’t look over. Doesn’t acknowledge his roommate.

“Dude,” Mac repeats from the doorway. “You wanna watch a movie? I made popcorn.”

Dennis doesn’t reply. Can’t reply. His arms are tight across his chest. The way he's lying, he looks like a dead body in a coffin at a showing. A corpse. A cadaver. A carcass.

“You okay, bro?”

“Yes,” he manages.

“You sure? You sick?”

Mac comes closer. Dennis can feel it. He can feel Mac’s hand on his forehead before it settles there. He cringes against it. He can still feel it even after Mac moves it away.

“Let’s watch a movie, man,” Mac says eventually. Dennis’ forehead isn’t hot. Hot maybe doesn’t exist. Cold exists. Sweating exists. Hot? He isn’t convinced.

He feels his flesh prickle. His clothes are scratchy. Shoulders shaking a little bit, he moves himself as if he’s standing above his body nudging at it with his hands. He follows Mac into the living room. He sits in a tight ball on the couch. He doesn’t care if Mac thinks he’s being weird. 

*

He is twenty-six. He is in the middle of sex. He can feel heavy breasts against his chest when he thrusts. He likes it; he doesn’t have to convince himself. He is in charge. He started it. She is underneath, he is not the one who’s trapped, she is the one who wouldn't be able to get away. 

She moans with pleasure. Her hands snake around his shoulders. She is pulling him closer to her. 

He reminds himself that he is in charge.

*

He is twenty-nine. He is too old to be feeling this way. He is a damn grown up. 

“C’mon, guy, you listening?”

He snaps straighter. Blinks at the burly truck driver looking dude sitting across the bar from him.

“Yes,” he lies, nodding once like he sees regular humans do.

“A beer,” the dude repeats.

“Coming up,” Dennis says like he’s in a commercial. His hand is shaky on the bottle opener. His hand is shaky as he sets the bottle down in front of the man.

“Den,” he hears from behind him. He turns.

“What?”

“You okay, man? You look like you slept on sandpaper.”

“Fine,” Dennis says, avoiding Mac’s warm dark eyes. “I’m just tired. I just didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“Okay,” Mac says. “If you need to check out early, bro, me and Dee can take care of things.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dee says. Dennis avoids her eyes too. He hates the way she looks at him when he’s like this. Hates the half-concern in her eyes. The set of her lips.

“I’m fine, Mac,” Dennis insists. 

“If you’re sure, dude.”

He wants to put himself in a corner. Wants to be the only person in the world. Wants to be surrounded by the people who make him feel relatively more safe and normal and acceptable. Wants both of these things and neither of them.

He cracks a beer open for himself and downs it quickly.

*

He is fourteen. He can hear her voice. It’s shrill and dusty and glassy. Like a window on an abandoned car. Thick and thin at the same time.

He can feel her coming toward him. Feel that it is going to happen again. That thing he likes. Because he does like it. He can feel breath on his neck. Smell the perfume. His eyes are trained on the library carpet with its infinite blue and purple specks. He wonders, if he counted them, how many he would come up with. But you can’t count such tiny specks in such a jumbled pattern so he doesn’t try. He wants to. Wants to because it would be something else.

He feels hands on his back. Long plastic fingernails scratching at him.

He sits up fast, breathing heavy, eyes bugging out. He is thirty-two. The bed creaks as he moves to get the fuck out of it. He backs up toward the wall, hands moving out toward an invisible threat. The dream dissipates into a shimmering mist. Slinks out the vents. The crack under the door.

“Den,” he hears. Groggily. He’s pressed his back against the wall, his arms around his chest. His shoulders won’t stay still. He smells the library. Smells Mac’s room. Drakkar Noir. Beer. Bible pages.

“Den,” he hears again. Blankets rustling. Hands on him. He flinches hard. 

“It’s okay,” he hears. He feels breath against his neck. 

Why would you have a nightmare about something you liked? He berates himself hard.

“Mac,” he hears himself say. His voice doesn’t come out right. It never does when he thinks of those burgundy nails. It comes out pleading and scratchy and quiet and pathetic. Frantic.

“Shh, man, it’s okay.”

He feels arms around him. He can’t see anything. Mac’s room is nice and dark. Darker than his own room thanks to the window positions. He can’t hug Mac back yet but he closes his eyes into his shoulder. He tries to breathe in the familiar scent-- comforting, he tells himself, though you don’t need to be comforted because you aren’t upset. He bargains with himself. Stop, he insists. Instead, slowly, his arms find their way around Mac. Fist around his soft tee shirt. Dennis’ tee shirt that Mac stole.

“It’s okay,” Mac says again. Dennis never said it wasn’t. 

“Let’s go back to bed,” Mac says.

“Just breathe,” Mac says.


End file.
